Further Lane

by James Brady

  Before Jesse got back into his pickup and set off on errands I didn’t even want to know about, he squinted at the sky south of us, out over the ocean.

  “Hurricane coming, Beech. Oughta keep an eye out.”

  “When?”

  “Oh, four days, maybe five. If it comes and I think it just might.”

  “Oh, hell,” I said, “they usually blow out to sea.”

  “Hope you’re right,” Jesse said, “but I don’t think so. Sometimes they make the turn and come up the coast at us.”

  That was when Her Ladyship spoke up:

  “I’d listen to Mr. Maine, Beecher. Red Indians or, as one ought to call them, Native Americans, are closer to nature than we are and they know such things. They have their ways, don’t they, Mr. Maine, the Great Manitou and all that?”

  “Well, Lady Alix, I guess some do. Me, every morning I watch The Weather Channel.”

  “Oh,” she said, considerably deflated.

  As if he too, like Jesse, could predict nature and knew a hurricane might be headed for the Hamptons, with time becoming of the essence, Evans was calling more frequently to hector his personal emissary into greater speed of action.

  “Of course, Harry,” I could hear her soothingly assure him. “And Mr. Stowe’s been awfully helpful. I’d say we’ll be hot on the trail of the manuscript within a matter of hours. You should be receiving messages in cipher on a regular basis from here on.”

  Evans apparently interrupted her and she actually listened for a time.

  “Yes, Harry, we’ve heard those reports out here about Mr. Felton offering rewards for Hannah’s story. But local authorities consider him something of a windbag and I’m confident we’ll get there first on behalf of Random House. Mr. Stowe has allies among the authorities and even has a Red Indian assisting us. Marvelous chap. Squints at the sky and tells one if there are hurricanes about.”

  Evans must have said something along the lines of “What the hell are you talking about?” Didn’t faze Alix a bit, nor did she draw breath:

  “Absolutely, he’s a sachem or chief of enormous standing. And one of the best informed authorities on the life and achievements of the late Crispus Attucks of Boston, a pivotal figure in Colonial history, as well. His name is Jesse Maine and he’s a wizard at predicting things. Mr. Stowe says he’s unerring.” She paused, thoughtful. “Perhaps it isn’t a sachem that he is, Harry, but a shaman. I’ll check and get back to you on the E-mail with details as to the correct term. But he is cracking good and you can count on us to recover Hannah’s story.”

  We had cocktails and smoked cigarettes and then, as if she were trying to plumb my depths, or perhaps she was just bored, Alix said:

  “What really happened there in Algiers, Beecher? When you were shot.”

  I liked her a lot but I wasn’t quite sure I really want to talk about Algiers. My father heard the story. So had Walter Anderson and a few others. Not many people. No matter how noble you’d been or what heroics you’d performed, you weren’t eager to go into detail about having been shot in the ass.

  “I’ll tell you about it sometime,” I said, vague and not very enthusiastic, and poured us both a fresh martini.

  When she didn’t say anything more and I suspected was sulking, I retreated into the usual psychobabble, saying people oughtn’t dwell on the unpleasant without first filtering the experience through the seine of time.…

  “Oh, poof!” Alix said. “If you don’t choose to tell me, fine. But don’t talk rubbish.”

  You had to like her, with her built-in shit detector. I was getting to like her more with every day. But then, I was vulnerable.

  * * *

  I don’t know how long I’d been asleep when Alix woke me.

  “Beecher, there’s something going on out there,” she whispered, bending over my bed so I could hear. Her hair hung long and loose, she looked sleepy in the half light of a moon through my window, she smelled warm and wonderful in an oversized cotton T-shirt. I sat up.

  “What, what?” I asked, still only partially awake.

  “Listen,” she said.

  There was something. A raccoon at the garbage? Wind in the chimneys? A red fox hunting in the hedges? A prowler? Andy Cutting looking through windows? Old houses make their own sounds in the night.

  I swung out of bed, naked, and grabbed khaki shorts from the chair and yanked them on. Then, barefoot, and clutching an old sand wedge from the battered golf bag leaning against the wall, I went downstairs, Alix following so close behind I could feel her breath on my neck.

  “Stay upstairs,” I said.

  “No.”

  She was always open to reason, Alix was.

  At the kitchen door I paused to listen. Nothing. I opened the door slowly and stepped out onto the flagstone. It felt cool, pleasantly so, damp. I walked out onto the lawn. The grass was wet. Dew. Above, stars and a sliver of moon. Behind me, still close, Alix. I hefted the sand wedge in my right hand, ready. What a fool I’d feel like if it was just a raccoon or a garbage hound rooting amid the trash bins. Yet I hoped it was a dog or a ’coon and not …

  There I heard the noise and almost simultaneously was blinded by a brilliant light and felt the blow and began to fall. After that, nothing …

  * * *

  “There now, Beecher, just lie still and try to count back from ten. Take your time, speed is hardly essential, slowly is fine. But I do need to know if you’ve got concussion.”

  Alix was kneeling over me where I lay on the grass and my head was wet. But it wasn’t blood. Or not all blood. Just a kitchen towel she’d wet under the faucet and wrapped turbanlike around my head.

  “Ouch.” It was still tender and Alix was probing.

  “You’re not counting,” she chided me. “Ten, nine, eight…”

  “I can count very nicely on my own, thank you.”

  “Seven, six, five…”

  God, but she was pushy.

  “Who slugged me? You see?”

  “Large chap. Don’t know him. Barely caught a glimpse. He swung something at you, I could hear the crack when it hit your head, you went down, and I was more concerned about you than identifying him. He blinded me with a flashlight of sorts and was off in an instant so by the time I looked up again, we were here alone, you and I. Sorry, Beecher, I should have been more alert.”

  Probably that was the same light that blinded me and possibly it was the flashlight he’d used to knock me out.

  “How long have I…”

  “Oh, gosh, not more than a few moments. The instant I applied cold compresses you began to stir. I say, you do have adventures, Beecher. Nothing dull about you.”

  From inside the house I could hear an unearthly howl. Now what the hell…?

  “Poor Mignonne, I sprang from bed so suddenly to wake you about prowlers, the poor dog must be petrified.”

  “Have it bark backwards for a bit. That should do it.”

  Alix gave me a look.

  “Don’t just lie there, Beecher, the grass is sopping. You’ll have rheumatism or something.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Ooooww,” the poodle howled.

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” she called out as she headed back to the house. I got myself up. Well, could be worse. Alix got into a robe and I toweled off and made coffee and we talked about it for a while—who it might have been and should we call the police—and then deciding the constructive course might be to get some sleep, we headed for our respective bedrooms.

  “Beecher?”

  “Yes?”

  “I was quite right about you, right from the start.”

  “What?”

  “You ARE a hard case. And I am pleased you don’t have concussion.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  She moved in close enough to me that her T-shirted nipples brushed lightly against my bare chest and reached up on her toes to kiss me very chastely but awfully pleasantly on the lips.

  “G’night, Beecher.”

>   I stood there watching her back and her legs as she headed for her bedroom.

  “Eight, four, seven, three…”

  She turned her head, briefly, to look back.

  “And witty, as well,” she said tartly. But smiling, too.

  Except that in the morning neither of us was smiling. Not after Alix found a sharpened, fire-hardened stake of privet hedge driven and viciously so through the soft tan glove leather upholstery of her Jag’s driver’s seat. Had I been hit with the thick end, as happened to Hannah? And if so, how fortunate was I not to have gotten the spear end of the damned thing as well?

  Was the whole business a warning or something more?

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Who pays your salary, Rupert Murdoch or Harry Evans…?

  For no reason except that he was large (Alix’s description) and hostile and had knocked me about on earlier occasions, I fixed on Leo Brass as our late-night prowler. Though what the devil he had to gain from snooping and pooping around my place was hard to figure. Sheer intimidation? Might be. Leo’s weird sense of humor? Neither Alix nor I knew anything that could damage Brass except that he’d nearly run us down with a speedboat. But it was clear I’d been challenged three times now, twice inarguably by Leo at Boaters and on the water, and a third time, maybe by him again. Since Alix had seen him on his Ashawag Hall soapbox, I questioned her pretty closely. No, she still couldn’t say. She’d been blinded by the flash; it had been too dark. He could have been Brass, he was that large, but beyond that, no.

  I flirted briefly with the idea of not reporting the incident on grounds it might cause more talk and trouble than it was worth. But with a stake of privet driven through Alix’s car seat, that might constitute withholding evidence not in a mere trespass and assault, but in a previous murder. So I called Tom.

  “This might be copycat stuff, Beech,” he said after having handed the privet over to the lab boys. “The weapon that killed Hannah was whittled by knife and then hardened in flame. This one was milled and then burned. Could be the same wacko both times but probably not. I’ll check into who owns milling gear around here. Pin down Leo Brass’s whereabouts if I can. How’s your head? The lab found a little blood we assume is yours on the meat end of the stake.”

  I was fine, I said. And was. Except that I was building one hell of a grudge against Leo Brass and thought the time had come when we’d better have a little talk.

  While with Royal Warrender you might be best off using subtlety and sneaking up on him after getting cousin Jasper stewed, with Leo Brass you were every bit as truculent as he was. You walked right up to Leo and punched him in the face to get his attention. Maybe if I got him sore enough, he’d lose his cool and tell me something. But when I tried the theory on Alix Dunraven, she pointed out its one inarguable flaw.

  “Isn’t he just slightly larger than you, Beecher?”

  There was that.

  “Perhaps you could send Mr. Maine. He’s rather intimidating.”

  I know she was just trying to be helpful but I hated to have my masculinity questioned.

  “No, this is something I’ve got to do.” You don’t go prowling around a man’s house late at night, scaring the poodle, then slug someone with a stake of privet and put holes in the car upholstery for no reason and get away with it. Not when it’s someone else’s dog and my head and Alix’s car and a Jag at that.

  But Alix was right about Brass. Not only was he larger than I, he was a local hero, leader of the Baymen and their one intellectual, a “green” who knew more than most people about the environment but too rugged to be a “tree-hugger.” His most recent feud with Hannah (hardly their first) dealt with her purchase of a forty-acre potato field, one of the Last of that size on Further Lane, which she intended to subdivide and sell off for pricey homes at a substantial profit. Brass accused Hannah of ecological rape; she called him a Trotskyite advocating the redistribution of wealth.

  I felt possessive myself about that same field. My father liked to tell the story of the time two little girls, about ten, who came to his kitchen door in sheer terror because a local cop cruising past had caught them in that very field, picking up potatoes the harvesting machine missed, and threw such a scare into them my dad had to let them hide out until the police dragnet was suspended. “One of the kids was Heather Robertson, Cliff’s daughter with Dina Merrill.”

  He liked recalling the imagery, that of the daughter of one of the richest women in America and a Hollywood movie star, scavenging for potatoes in a field on Further Lane.

  I drove the Blazer but Alix came with me. Just in case I might not feel up to driving home … afterwards. I knew how athletic Leo was and with a considerable rep as a fighter. I did have, though Her Ladyship didn’t know it, a sort of secret weapon. Which I now told her about, keeping it brief but reassuring.

  “Don’t be too sure I’m entirely at Leo’s mercy. I do have my ‘Nixons.’”

  “Oh, and just what are they, Beecher? Some variety of crossbow or broadsword?”

  I ignored the sarcasm.

  “My father was in naval intelligence in a lot of dodgy places during the Cold War and they assigned him a driver-bodyguard who was a career Marine. He sort of adopted me. His name was Guns and he was pretty clever with his fists. And his elbows. And his feet. I was a skinny thirteen-year-old and Guns taught me what he called ‘Nixons,’ for ‘dirty tricks.’ I’m a little out of practice but they usually come back.”

  “Were you prevented from using them recently in Algiers? And damaged as a result?” she asked.

  “Well, yeah, a little. My ‘Nixons’ don’t work so well on a mob. But I’m fine now.”

  Astonishing what this young woman knew. An impressive store of useless knowledge. And she now surprised me again. “It was Leo Brass, wasn’t it, who competed at university in the decathlon?”

  “Yes, hell of an all-around athlete. Why?” I assumed she was trying to warn me off a confrontation with such a formidable foe.

  “Because one of the ten disciplines in the decathlon is javelin-throwing. Mightn’t that suggest a link between a spear of sharpened privet and the ferocious Mr. Brass?”

  Could be, I admitted. Could also be a red herring offered up to incriminate the innocent and toss a little obscuring dust.

  Leo lived out by Louse Point which, despite its name, is a nice neck of land at the east side of Accobonac Harbor. Wonderful boating, nice beach, good fishing when they were running. “Louse Point?” Alix said, turning it over on her tongue to enjoy the dreadful sound of it. “Louse Point.”

  “Now you stay in the car. Just in case…”

  “But you have your ‘Nixons,’ Beecher. We’re relying heavily on those, y’know.”

  “Sure.”

  I wish I felt as confident as she did. All the Winston Churchill bravado, that magnificent wartime defiance toward a more powerful Nazi foe, seemed to have come down to Alix through the genes. Or did they issue stuff like that at Oxford?

  Fortunately, Leo wasn’t home.

  Claire came out, looking sulky but nothing like the whipped girl Hannah bullied. More pugnacious. Each time I’d seen her since Hannah’s death, she’d matured, grown stronger. “He’s out in the boat,” she said.

  I couldn’t resist.

  “Running down canoes?”

  “Go to hell. That was just teasing. If Leo wanted to he could have cut your canoe in half. And you with it!”

  “I suppose he could.” No point arguing. And I was pretty relieved not to have to fight Leo Brass, at least not yet.

  Claire’s mood swings were something. Last time she’d come to apologize. I wondered what she’d say if she heard what Jesse said about her boyfriend. And her mother. I must say, Claire was looking pretty good despite everything. If she ever traded in those glasses, well …

  But she was again hostile. “Reporters,” she snarled, “bloodsuckers! Feeding off death, snooping for scandal. Even the cops finally had the decency to take down the yellow ribbons and go away.
Page Six and the Enquirer went home. But you keep sniffing around.”

  I told her I only wanted to know what Leo was up to, why she and Leo tried to scare us off. I didn’t mention our midnight prowler; I was keeping that one for Leo himself.

  “Just stay away. And that includes Hannah’s place—my place on Further Lane. I told the Kroepkes. You come messing around there and I’ll…”

  I thought I could again smell beer on her breath but this wasn’t the time or place to discuss the Volstead Act. There was a bit more of her shouting and then I got back in the Blazer and Alix drove us off.

  “Well…” I said.

  “Yes, well, Beecher. I do admire the way you stood up to Mr. Brass. Even if he wasn’t there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “But I think it’s time we delve somewhat more deeply into the case. How can we determine just who was most fearful of what Hannah’s book might tell? Who could be most damaged by her revelations? Had the most to lose? Claire and Leo or someone else? I know they’re unpleasant, but are we wasting time on them when it’s someone else entirely? Isn’t it logical to explore things like that?”

  She was very brisk. I think Alix felt cheated, disappointed Brass and I hadn’t had a fight.

  Couldn’t blame her. You come all this way, you want to see the show.

  “Might Leo have killed Hannah?” she asked, thoughtful.

  “He could have. But don’t forget, he found the body. Wouldn’t that be calling down suspicion on himself?”

  “But they always return to the scene of the crime. Or so I’ve read.”

  “That’s an old wives’ tale.”

  “Not in my experience,” she said. “Don’t you recall McCray the Hammersmith Strangler?”

  We ended up at the Parrot, drinking Mexican beer and munching tortilla chips. Royal Warrender. He was the one that intrigued her. “Is it possible I might meet him? I mean, without being obvious about it?”

  I didn’t think so, I said. But I’d give it some thought.

  When we got back to the gatehouse there was a message from Random House. Not the boss this time. Evans was apparently too annoyed to get on the phone himself. An aide informed Lady Alix that Page Six of the New York Post had a report Random House had panicked over the possibility its million-dollar manuscript was missing from Hannah Cutting’s house, that perhaps such a manuscript had never even existed, and since Hannah was dead, no one could say. Random House had a dozen editors and private eyes on the case, pestering wealthy people and tracking down clues all over East Hampton. The newspaper gave as one of its sources on the story “local community activist Leo Brass, the man who found Hannah’s body on Labor Day Sunday.”